Cut Spending or it Could Get Ugly

Rather than taking the message politely, Democrats have plowed ahead with their plans to raise taxes on the “wealthy” in America. In doing so they will be hammering America’s small businesses with new tax burdens that will only hurt the prospects of the nation’s poor and jobless.

There simply isn’t room in American politics today for congressmen who believe that spending America into default, rather than cutting spending to meet revenues, is the right way to go. As Reihan Salam writes, even 50% of those Americans earning under $50,000 are against raising taxes on the wealthy. They understand that what is good for America’s job-creators is good for them too.

To stem the anger at raising taxes on the wealthy, Sen. Claire McCaskill (MO-D) has called for increasing taxes only on “millionaires,” or those earning over $1 million in a year. As the editors of National Review write “a large number of small-business owners have an income exceeding $1 million — precisely once in their lives, usually the year they sell their businesses and retire.”

That means for small medical practices, accounting firms, law firms and any other small business, retiring might mean taking a much bigger hit than anticipated. Chalk this right up with the death tax as an immoral confiscation of Americans’ hard earned wealth.

As the Obama administration considers any and all options to protect the spending-state, the Europeans are faced with the harsh reality of austerity. The U.S. will surely face the same reality, but the sooner cuts are made the better, because if the U.S. goes into debt-default territory, there will be no Ireland-style bailouts forthcoming. There simply isn’t any country with the need/desire to do the bailing out. Hence the Fed’s rapid devaluation of the U.S. dollar.

As Pat Buchanan writes this morning, the troubles in Europe could very well lead to a termination of the European Union. He says “the Germans, who will have to cough up more euros for any new fund to rescue the governments and banks of nations that are neither as conscientious nor work as hard as they, are fed up with bailing out the La Dolce Vita nations of Club Med.” There is no Germany for the U.S. to look to in need of a bailout.

The tax and spend model has been tried. Europe has perfected it to the point of their own self-destruction. Imagine the riots in Greece, the strikes of France, and the anarchists of London. Now imagine them as armed and angry Americans who have watched their government throw away the wealth of the most powerful nation on the earth. America should start reforming its spending sooner rather than later, so as not to reach the revolutionary tipping point.